Method
How a sign is read here
The method is deliberately boring. It exists so that a reader with scientific training can check every step, and so that the project cannot quietly inflate its claims.
Five steps, in this order
- The Arabic text. Quoted from the Madinah muṣḥaf, without editorial trimming. Where the meaning turns on a single word, the root and its classical lexical range are given (Lisān al-ʿArab, Tāj al-ʿarūs, and where relevant the Maqāyīs al-lugha of Ibn Fāris).
- A translation. One translation is given in full and named. Where older translations obscure a term — “clot of congealed blood” for ‘alaqah is the standard example — the difficulty is stated rather than smoothed over.
- The classical reading. What the major commentators actually said, including where they disagreed. A verse read only through modern eyes is a verse being used, not read.
- The scientific observation. Stated as a specialist would state it, with the strength of the evidence made explicit: established, probable, contested, or speculative. Citations are given.
- The limits. Every page ends with a section headed Where the analogy ends. If a page has nothing to put in that section, the page is not finished.
What counts as a correspondence
A correspondence is not a proof. It is a relationship between two statements — one textual, one empirical — that is specific enough to be examined. Three tests are applied:
Specificity
Would the statement be remarkable in any text of its time and place? A verse that says the sky is above us is not a sign; it is a description.
Independence
The scientific claim must stand on its own evidence, gathered without reference to the verse. The verse is compared to the science, not derived from it.
Charity and restraint
The most modest reading of the verse that still makes sense is preferred. The most generous reading of the science is not.
Four errors this project refuses
The retro-fit. Reading a modern term back into a word whose classical sense was broader. Anzala (“sent down”) is used of rain, garments and cattle; it cannot, by itself, be evidence of stellar nucleosynthesis.
The stolen metaphor. Treating poetic language as technical. The Qur'an describes mountains as pegs and the sky as a canopy. These are images with real force; they are not survey data.
The single word. Building a case on one lexical coincidence while ignoring the verse's grammar and context. Root meanings are a resource, not a trump card.
The unfalsifiable claim. If no observation could count against a reading, the reading is not being offered as knowledge. It may still be true, but it is not being tested, and this site does not present it as though it were.
On the word āyah
The Qur'an calls its verses āyāt — signs, markers. The same word is used for the phenomena of nature: the alternation of night and day, the rain, the winds. The Qur'an's own proposal is that the book and the world are two registers of the same address. This site takes that proposal seriously enough to keep the two registers distinct while comparing them — which is the only way the comparison can mean anything.
If you work in one of the fields covered here and find an error, the correction is the point. Please send it, with a citation. Corrections are credited.
Version 0.2 · This page is a living document and will change as the project matures.